WASHINGTON -- For the first time in over 24 hours, Tim Tawa finally had a chance to breathe as he stood at his locker in the D-backs’ clubhouse at Nationals Park on Saturday evening.
“It’s still sinking in a little bit,” Tawa said.
Tawa had just made his Major League debut in the D-backs’ 4-3 loss to the Nats. But the final result didn’t matter to Tawa. His focus was on the gravity of the moment.
Around 4:30 p.m. MST on Friday, Tawa had been called into Triple-A Reno manager Jeff Gardner’s office. Tawa was getting ready to go hit batting practice, but instead he was sent packing: Arizona’s No. 25 prospect (per MLB Pipeline) was headed to the airport to begin his trek to Washington, D.C. He tried to sleep on the plane but wasn’t sure he got much rest. Even postgame, he was still riding that adrenaline high.
“I'm sure in 20-30 minutes, I'll feel the fatigue of being on my feet all day and just the flight and all that stuff,” Tawa said. “But right now, just still trying to absorb and process the last couple hours and just really soak it all in and remember some of the little details that are going to mean a lot to me later down the road.”
Arizona manager Torey Lovullo is a firm believer in starting whoever is called up immediately. No sleep, no problem: Adrenaline will carry you and muscle memory will take over. So when the D-backs determined Ketel Marte would need IL time for his left hamstring strain, and when Lovullo got word it was Tawa being called up, he had one question.
“I asked, ‘Will he be here?’” Lovullo said pregame. “And they said, ‘He will be here.’ And they were telling me about some of the travel problems, and I said, ‘If he's here, he's playing.’ And he will be wide awake when his name is called at four o'clock. So he's here and in the starting lineup.”
So, Tawa hopped on a flight from Reno to Phoenix, where he had a layover, before catching a redeye to the nation’s capital. His parents did the same, driving to LAX and catching a flight, while Tawa’s brothers -- one lives in D.C. and the other in New York -- made their own plans to catch the game. Tawa’s girlfriend was also in attendance.
That cohort of Tawa’s biggest fans sat in the stands, phones out and ready to capture the moment, as Tawa stepped to the plate in the bottom of the third inning with two outs. At that point, Tawa did what he knew best: he waited for his pitch.
“I was just looking for a fastball out over the plate, like I always am,” Tawa said. “Then got that fastball up, out over [the plate] and tried to put a good swing on it. Still kind of a blur in terms of what happened after that, but just remember smiling and that feeling of, ‘OK, got it out of the way.’ But also just super ecstatic and excited and felt like hard work paid off right there.”
Tawa, of course, kept the ball, which he gave to his dad postgame as a “thank you” for all the hours he (and his mom) put into Tawa’s career growing up. And as Tawa left the field at the end of the third inning (he was stranded on base), his family gave him a standing ovation.
“I think that was one of the highlights of the day right there,” Tawa said, “Especially just seeing my brothers there. I haven't seen those guys in, you know, months.”
Pregame, Tawa admitted the whole scene was fairly surreal. It took a while to sink in, and even postgame it hadn’t fully hit him that he was a Major Leaguer. He was hoping that, once he took the field, it would “just be playing baseball,” and to some extent it was -- but not entirely.
“It felt like that, I don't know, a little bit?” Tawa said. “But not really. At the same time, it was tough not to just be taking in the scene a lot of the game, like I caught myself kind of turning around and looking at the scoreboard or the fans or my family, or everybody else who was there. It was baseball when pitches were being thrown, but it was a lot more than that for everything else.”
Tawa has spent the past four years since he was drafted in the 11th round out of Stanford in 2021 preparing for this moment as he slowly climbed through Arizona’s farm system. He spent all of 2023 and most of ‘24 at Double-A Amarillo before being promoted on Aug. 20. So when Lovullo asked Tawa, “Are you ready?” there was only one response.
“He said, ‘I'm always ready.’ And that's who he is,” Lovullo said pregame. “He's the type of guy that everybody pulls for in the organization, and what I said about him in Spring Training, he’s a good baseball player. … He's a winning player.”
Though the D-backs didn’t win on Saturday, it’s safe to say Tawa had a debut for the books -- and he’s just on Page 1.